The activist’s handpicked Supreme Courtroom candidates had been finally chosen by Trump and confirmed to the bench.
Explosive new reporting reveals that former senior White Home adviser Kellyanne Conway seems to have reached a enterprise settlement with outstanding conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo in 2017 — an settlement that apparently paid off in spades for the activist when Conway advocated for President Donald Trump to appoint Supreme Courtroom justices backed by Leo.
Politico reported on Tuesday that right-wing activist Leonard Leo had helped finance the sale of Conway’s polling firm, which she offered amid questions on potential conflicts of curiosity, by way of one of his many darkish cash teams. The sale to agency Artistic Response Ideas Inc. was price between $1 million and $5 million, in line with analyses of the sale.
Across the identical time, as certainly one of Trump’s shut advisers, Conway was one of the crucial outstanding backers of Leo’s handpicked candidates for the Supreme Courtroom. That advocacy was outcomes for Leo and his darkish cash community, as Trump nominees Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett had been all on an inventory of Supreme Courtroom candidates that Leo had ready.
These candidates had been chosen by Leo after fears circulated among the many Republican Social gathering that Trump, who was as soon as pro-abortion and a registered Democrat, could be much less radically conservative than the celebration wished. Together with Conway’s advocacy, Leo was in a position to form the Supreme Courtroom right into a traditionally far proper courtroom that has overturned decades-old precedent to finish federal abortion rights and that would additional eviscerate American democracy.
If Leo did assist to finance the sale of the corporate, as paperwork counsel he did, it might be a violation of ethics legal guidelines that stop officers from personally benefiting from relationships with folks of their authorities work. Leo and the Conway household have deep ties, as Conway’s husband is an previous pal of Leo’s by way of their work within the Federalist Society.
The paperwork cache “actually reveals Kellyanne as a automobile for Leo, the main position Leo has performed and the way Trump turned his instrument,” Heart for Political Accountability President Bruce Freed advised Politico.
Conservative activist and former Federalist Society vp Leonard Leo is comparatively unknown among the many public, however he is among the largest names inside right-wing activism and is arguably one of the crucial highly effective figures in U.S. politics immediately.
Not solely was he instrumental within the affirmation of Trump’s Supreme Courtroom picks — and in getting Barack Obama’s nomination, Merrick Garland, blocked — however he has additionally helped to get each different conservative sitting Supreme Courtroom justice confirmed to the bench, and as soon as served on the board of a gaggle led by right-wing activist Virginia Thomas, Justice Clarence Thomas’s spouse.
That the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade with Leo’s hand-picked Supreme Courtroom conservative majority is not any mistake. He has been on the heart of darkish cash teams’ long-running anti-abortion campaigns, which have pushed hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into Republican politicians’ marketing campaign coffers and filling state and federal choose slots; for them, the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson was a significant win, many years within the making.
It’s not simply abortion that Leo’s teams are concerned in. Proper-wing darkish cash teams affiliated with Leo have additionally funneled cash into supporting organizations backing the plaintiffs in Moore v. Harper, who’re arguing for a fringe authorized principle that will give state legislatures sole authority over elections, permitting them to attract gerrymandered maps and move voter suppression legal guidelines with out courtroom intervention.
